Say my name

When are you too old to call your other half boy/girlfriend, and what do you call them instead? We look at a very modern social dilemma

J
ennifer Aniston’s impending wedding to Justin Theroux is causing a great deal of relief in the celebrity media. But on gossip sites and in chatrooms, it is widely agreed that the English language has exhausted itself trying to document Jen’s string of — what? Beaux? Hunks? Men? Boyfs? It’s hard to know what to call the — mostly — fully grown-up men she has dated. Self-made millionaires aged 44 have surely outgrown “boyfriends”. “Aniston’s new significant other”, however, makes for a terrible headline.

Of course, for most unmarried couples over the age of 17, describing the emotional bond between you and your live-in partner is problematic. If they have just spent the weekend mopping up your sick and buying your sanitary products, is “love affair” entirely accurate? But “relationship”? Way to kill the passion, dude. Love affairs have poets and troubadours; relationships have counsellors. Which creates a delicate problem in modern etiquette.